The US State with a Union Jack in its flag, the war in which we didn’t fight but grew vegetables and other weird episodes from British Imperial history

Recent posts:

As everyone in the UK knows there was once a time when the Union Jack flew in many, many places across the world.

Now, a website about style, football and gadgets isn’t really a place for too many value judgements on the British Empire. Suffice to say that we did some good things, but we also inflicted an awful lot of damage too in subjugating, and occasionally wiping out indigenous communities. Also the repercussions of the lines on the map that Britons drew lingers on in The Middle East, South America, parts of Africa and closer to home in Ireland.

However one hugely astonishing thing about the British is the way in which people of this sea-faring nation have been just about everywhere in the globe.

It was a thought that last year inspired historian Stuart Laycock to pen a fascinating book called All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded. It is safe to say that the list that hasn’t had any British influence is a pretty short one and includes The Vatican, Monaco, Chad, Mongolia and Paraguay among others. Britain has in fact invaded nearly 90% of the countries in the world, so it isn’t that surprising that in some parts of the world we don’t have the best of reputations.

Questions about the nature of British Imperialism aside the book does throw up some amazing anecdotes about places that have been influenced by the British that almost no one in this country has a clue about.

For example what about the US state that has a Union Jack as part of its flag? Or the German island which we ran as a major holiday destination for much of the nineteenth century? Or the Scandinavian country that we kind of ‘invaded’ so we could use one of its islands as a vegetable patch.

Here then are ten really great stories. Some are inspired by the book , which if you love history really is a must purchase. I have also done some of research of my own and of course there are a couple of nods to Wikipedia, from whence many of the images came.

10 Sweden

We have always been great pals with the Swedes, but we did occupy a very small bit of the country back in 1810. It was actually the French's fault as they insisted that the Swedes stop trading with us. When the Swedes said no the French threatened an invasion unless the Swedes declared war on us. Bowing to pressure the Swedes did declare war but no fighting ever happened. Instead a British fleet was based throughout the 'war' in a place called Vinga Sound (or Sand) using the nearby islands to grow vegetables. Eventually the Swedes fell out with French and joined up with us, the war ended and we shared lots of carrots.